PKB- Meagan Coon
My first semester of college was much different than I expected. It flew by and I am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact its almost finals week. By far the most difficult class I had this semester was nutrition. My high school was not incredibly prestigious and I was always the kind of student that could get good grades without having to study. Nutrition was a wake up call for me and I am very happy I decided to take it first semester. It made me realize I would need to work a lot harder to get through my college courses and that I would need to dedicate a lot more time than I ever have to my work and studying. I really liked nutrition, which helped because I apply myself much more in areas I am interested in. I actually decided to change my major to nutrition and dietetics after about a month in the course. I found this course so difficult because it involves a lot of chemistry, which is a subject I have not had since sophomore year of high school. I created new study habits for this class that I also used for the rest of my classes. This included studying not just the night before the exam and using multiple sources to make sure I covered all of the information. I used Evernote to keep a personal knowledge base for all of my classes.
I used Evernote for just about everything in this course throughout the semester. I used it to record notes for the chapters of the books we read which was incredibly helpful for class discussions. I used it to record important dates of assignments that were due, including this one. The most beneficial use of evernote for me was the web clipper. I found and clipped all of the articles for my Rhode Island Strategic Plan Project during the first few classes in the library. When I went to write my summaries all of the information and sources I needed were already there and easy to access. When I needed to go to the original website I could just click the URL. I also downloaded the Evernote app on my phone so that I could look at it whenever I did not have my computer. Zotero was also an incredibly beneficial tool. Now that I use it I do not remember how I cited things before. When my zotero disconnected the other day I was struggling to find how to source information the way that I used to it took me much longer. Throughout this course Evernote and the web clipper have been extremely useful tools along with zotero and I plan on continuing to use them throughout the rest of my college career. Personally I was not a big fan of the Mindmap but I think that is just because I did not entirely understand how to use it, and the few times we used it many of my classmates just played around with it. I feel if I knew how to use it to its full potential I would like it more.
I continued to use my PKB for just about everything. I had been introduced to Evernote originally my junior year of high school. One of my teachers won iPads for her class and we had the opportunity to use evernote. She was not very well trained with the iPads or evernote, if she had been I think it would have been utilized much better at the time. I do not have my old account information but it would be interesting to see what is in my old PKB. With new knowledge of all that evernote could do I found it much more useful. I used it to keep notes in every single class except one. The one class I did not us it in was Com 101 because my teacher did not allow us to takes notes on a computer, which personally I found it ridiculous its 2014. The more accustomed I became with evernote the more I did with it. My favorite feature was the ability to search notes. Whenever I was studying and could not remember something I would just type it in the bar and whatever I was looking for could easily be found. This is so much more convenient than sorting through a notebook wondering when I took something down. It definitely makes note-taking, studying and learning easier overall. Zotero makes my life so much easier as well. I used it for citations in every class, including com 101 even though she has something against convenient technology, and in journalism for a few papers. For a giant group presentation in com we used google drives. This method worked out very well creating our project because we did not have to meet outside of class and arrange around everyone’s schedule. We could all access the same presentation and outline over the internet. I would not have known how to use that if not for this course. On the day of the presentation my computer locked me out of my Google account saying the page was invalid. Because I am not great with technology it took me a few days to figure out the problem. That is the one and only setback I have had using any of these applications.
The organization I have for my personal knowledge base took me a while to figure out. In evernote I have the list of each note in order by the date they were created on the left. On the right I have a preview of the note I have chosen. Recently my search bar and option to create a new note have disappeared from the top of my window. They reappear if I expand my window to the full screen, which I find very strange. I have 4 notebooks one for this course, psychology, nutrition and journalism. I have only used a few tags and only in this course. I used a tag for each book we read, and a tag for special education in Finland, which was my RI strategic plan project question. I recently discovered how to stack notebooks too so I will definitely do that come the end of the semester!
A strategy that I adopted this semester to help augment how I learn is trying to utilize all of the technology I have to the best that I can. I have never been incredibly good with technology of any kind especially computers. Throughout the entire semester I tried to put all of my notes and anything I needed to know into my PKB. It would be much easier for me to keep everything I need to know in one searchable database. This way I can study from it, look things up and even make connections between my classes because it is so much easier to find information. Its especially beneficial right before a big exam when I can quickly read over my notes on my phone before it starts. I have been to the help desk in the library a few times for computer help but I am definitely improving! I feel like there is a great amount of technology and applications available that if used the right way can benefit education. I think that using the PKB has definitely enhanced my education and made my first semester a little easier. I will definitely keep this PKB for the rest of my college career. It has a lot of information in it already and this is information I could need again in the future. It is definitely worth keeping, especially for my nutrition class because that is my major. After 4 years of college I will have hundreds of notes of information at my fingertips on my phone and computer that I can access whenever I need. I know I will not be able to remember everything I am told in every class of college but having it on a database I can search is using technology the right way. I am not sure why anyone would not want to utilize this!
My first semester of college was much different than I expected. It flew by and I am having trouble wrapping my head around the fact its almost finals week. By far the most difficult class I had this semester was nutrition. My high school was not incredibly prestigious and I was always the kind of student that could get good grades without having to study. Nutrition was a wake up call for me and I am very happy I decided to take it first semester. It made me realize I would need to work a lot harder to get through my college courses and that I would need to dedicate a lot more time than I ever have to my work and studying. I really liked nutrition, which helped because I apply myself much more in areas I am interested in. I actually decided to change my major to nutrition and dietetics after about a month in the course. I found this course so difficult because it involves a lot of chemistry, which is a subject I have not had since sophomore year of high school. I created new study habits for this class that I also used for the rest of my classes. This included studying not just the night before the exam and using multiple sources to make sure I covered all of the information. I used Evernote to keep a personal knowledge base for all of my classes.
I used Evernote for just about everything in this course throughout the semester. I used it to record notes for the chapters of the books we read which was incredibly helpful for class discussions. I used it to record important dates of assignments that were due, including this one. The most beneficial use of evernote for me was the web clipper. I found and clipped all of the articles for my Rhode Island Strategic Plan Project during the first few classes in the library. When I went to write my summaries all of the information and sources I needed were already there and easy to access. When I needed to go to the original website I could just click the URL. I also downloaded the Evernote app on my phone so that I could look at it whenever I did not have my computer. Zotero was also an incredibly beneficial tool. Now that I use it I do not remember how I cited things before. When my zotero disconnected the other day I was struggling to find how to source information the way that I used to it took me much longer. Throughout this course Evernote and the web clipper have been extremely useful tools along with zotero and I plan on continuing to use them throughout the rest of my college career. Personally I was not a big fan of the Mindmap but I think that is just because I did not entirely understand how to use it, and the few times we used it many of my classmates just played around with it. I feel if I knew how to use it to its full potential I would like it more.
I continued to use my PKB for just about everything. I had been introduced to Evernote originally my junior year of high school. One of my teachers won iPads for her class and we had the opportunity to use evernote. She was not very well trained with the iPads or evernote, if she had been I think it would have been utilized much better at the time. I do not have my old account information but it would be interesting to see what is in my old PKB. With new knowledge of all that evernote could do I found it much more useful. I used it to keep notes in every single class except one. The one class I did not us it in was Com 101 because my teacher did not allow us to takes notes on a computer, which personally I found it ridiculous its 2014. The more accustomed I became with evernote the more I did with it. My favorite feature was the ability to search notes. Whenever I was studying and could not remember something I would just type it in the bar and whatever I was looking for could easily be found. This is so much more convenient than sorting through a notebook wondering when I took something down. It definitely makes note-taking, studying and learning easier overall. Zotero makes my life so much easier as well. I used it for citations in every class, including com 101 even though she has something against convenient technology, and in journalism for a few papers. For a giant group presentation in com we used google drives. This method worked out very well creating our project because we did not have to meet outside of class and arrange around everyone’s schedule. We could all access the same presentation and outline over the internet. I would not have known how to use that if not for this course. On the day of the presentation my computer locked me out of my Google account saying the page was invalid. Because I am not great with technology it took me a few days to figure out the problem. That is the one and only setback I have had using any of these applications.
The organization I have for my personal knowledge base took me a while to figure out. In evernote I have the list of each note in order by the date they were created on the left. On the right I have a preview of the note I have chosen. Recently my search bar and option to create a new note have disappeared from the top of my window. They reappear if I expand my window to the full screen, which I find very strange. I have 4 notebooks one for this course, psychology, nutrition and journalism. I have only used a few tags and only in this course. I used a tag for each book we read, and a tag for special education in Finland, which was my RI strategic plan project question. I recently discovered how to stack notebooks too so I will definitely do that come the end of the semester!
A strategy that I adopted this semester to help augment how I learn is trying to utilize all of the technology I have to the best that I can. I have never been incredibly good with technology of any kind especially computers. Throughout the entire semester I tried to put all of my notes and anything I needed to know into my PKB. It would be much easier for me to keep everything I need to know in one searchable database. This way I can study from it, look things up and even make connections between my classes because it is so much easier to find information. Its especially beneficial right before a big exam when I can quickly read over my notes on my phone before it starts. I have been to the help desk in the library a few times for computer help but I am definitely improving! I feel like there is a great amount of technology and applications available that if used the right way can benefit education. I think that using the PKB has definitely enhanced my education and made my first semester a little easier. I will definitely keep this PKB for the rest of my college career. It has a lot of information in it already and this is information I could need again in the future. It is definitely worth keeping, especially for my nutrition class because that is my major. After 4 years of college I will have hundreds of notes of information at my fingertips on my phone and computer that I can access whenever I need. I know I will not be able to remember everything I am told in every class of college but having it on a database I can search is using technology the right way. I am not sure why anyone would not want to utilize this!